CFR Co-Director, Dr. Steve Beach, named Regents Professor 2021
Dr. Beach’s scholarship focuses on the way that community, family and marital process affect mental and physical health. His pioneering work and collaborations have shown that strengthening close relationships, including marriage and parenting relationships, can play a critical role in reducing depression and physical health problems, and can buffer the impact of stress from economic and social factors. Dr. Beach also serves as co-director of the Center for Family Research Clinical Program in the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research at UGA.
Dr. Beach has over 250 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, as well as multiple books and book chapters. He has received over $60 million in grant funding from organizations including the National Cancer Institute and numerous other divisions within the National Institutes of Health. Among other notable work, Dr. Beach recently initiated a program of research with African American families living in rural communities in Georgia, implementing the Promoting Strong African American Families. This program focuses on strengthening marital, co-parenting and parent-child relationships to help foster resilience to economic hardship and experiences of discrimination.
Dr. Beach has received numerous awards, including the Family Psychologist of the Year Award from Division 43 of the American Psychological Association, the President’s Award of Distinction for Team Science by the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, and the Best Family Economics Paper of the Year by the National Council on Family Relations.
“Dr. Beach’s work has had a dramatic and positive impact in multiple areas, and I am certain that his future work will continue to further enhance our understanding of the ways in which strengthening marriages and families can improve the quality of lives and the health of communities,” said Lily D. McNair, president of Tuskegee University. “His focus on the health of those confronting multiple sources of chronic stress has been critical to this research effort.”
Dr. Steve Beach
